‘Task’ doubles down on pandering to Delco, and I’m eating it up

I was out of town when HBO’s Task premiered Sept. 7 and when I finally tasked myself with watching it last week I was stunned by the sheer amount of local references creator Brad Ingelsby artfully crams into each episode.

His script is the written equivalent of parallel parking a pickup truck covered with Eagles stickers into a space of one’s own creation at a packed Wawa parking lot while listening to the Phillies on WIP.

I don’t have official stats, but I’d put my money on Task having more deep-cut references to Delco, Philly, and the surrounding suburbs than any other movie or TV show ever made, including Action News (watch out, 6abc, Ingelsby is moving closer to your world, my friend).

In the first 15 minutes of the first episode alone, I counted more than a half-dozen local references. Heck, before you’re even three minutes in you see Mark Ruffalo driving along listening to a KYW Newsradio “Traffic on the Twos” report about a stolen car on the Blue Route just before Springfield (I haven’t seen any nods to The Inquirer yet. It’s fine, really. *sniffle*).

Ingelsby, a Chester County native who seems to share an equal reverence for all things Delco, proved his commitment and passion for our region with his previous hit HBO series, Mare of Easttown, which was filmed locally but set in a fictional Delco town. Now, he’s done what any good local would do after a big win — no, not go to Lou Turk’s or climb a pole on Broad Street — he’s doubled down on Delco.

While there is a blink-and-you-will-miss-it nod to Easttown, this time around the towns mentioned in Task are very real, from Chester to Broomall. Heck, even Marcus Hook gets a shout-out and Marcus Hook doesn’t usually get anything but gruff.

Filmed locally, the show features spots you’ll instantly recognize, like the exterior of the Roundhouse in Philly and the Llanerch Diner in Upper Darby. There’s even a scene that takes place at the very spot where I had my worst date ever, which isn’t helping me to forget it (and no, it wasn’t at the Coatesville police station).

“But is it good?” you may ask, as my friend did the other evening while I regaled him with a list of local references in hopes of getting him to watch the show.

It’s not just good, Task is an edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting drama filled with complex, tortured characters (at which Ingelsby excels) who find themselves in heart-pounding situations. Each episode somehow ends with a mind-bending cliffhanger that’s worthy of an entire season of TV.

The seven-episode miniseries is about a task force charged with finding masked robbers who’ve been targeting area drug houses. Ruffalo’s character, an FBI agent named Tom Brandis with a Delco dad bod and a drinking problem he uses a plastic Phillies cup to fuel, is in charge of the force. Other members of the task force include a Delaware County detective, a Chester detective sergeant, and a state trooper from the Lancaster barracks.

Which brings me to the biggest gripe I’ve seen online about the show — the pronunciation of Lancaster as Lan-cast-er (locals pronounce it Lank-iss-ter). I was also thrown off when Ruffalo mispronounced Acme as Acme (it’s Ac-a-me around these parts, sir) and when he tried to say wooder (it was an adorable attempt, but the Hulk did not smash it).

Ruffalo doesn’t lean into the Delco accent much, and it doesn’t hurt his excellent performance, but many of the other actors — several of whom are Irish or British — do and they do it pretty well. As my colleague and Delco native Nick Vadala said of the show, “we’re dealing with weapons-grade Delco drawls.”

But it’s not just the accent, it’s also the vocabulary. Vadala pointed out to me that in one scene, the FBI bureau chief played by Martha Plimpton says “smacked ass,” a phrase he heard growing up in Delco that’s also popular in Philly and perhaps nowhere else in the entire world.

The phrase, which refers to someone foolish, dates back at least to 1971 in The Inquirer and Daily archives and can be used with or without a hyphen, depending on whether it’s a noun or adjective (ex: “…Trump is a smacked ass who’s become a unanimous subject of ridicule,” Daily News columnist Jill Porter, circa 1990. “Maybe E! True Hollywood Story has run out of smacked-ass celebs to profile,” Daily News columnist Howard Gensler, circa 2004).

Ingelsby must have grown up hearing it too because Jean Smart said the exact same phrase in Mare of Easttown.

The show also centers on a single Delco dad played by Tom Pelphrey — a New Jersey native so perfectly cast you can picture him throwing a few back at the Frontier Saloon — and on members of a Delco biker gang called the Dark Hearts who run a crime syndicate.

It’s nice that Ingelsby thinks Delconians can be so organized with their crime. In my experience, crime in Delco is typically bizarre one-offs that make even those of us who live here wonder “Is Delco a real place?”

Yes, it is real, and the fact that Ingelsby — after achieving massive success with Mare — not only set his follow-up series here but came back here to film it, feels like validation for this region and has led to a show that, as one of my followers on Threads said, “feels so lived-in and married to place.”

I can’t imagine how Task will end, and I don’t want to. I just want to keep savoring this omelet of local Easter eggs Ingelsby has expertly made for us like he was a cook at the Country Squire Diner, and I recommend you do, too.